This is Our House [Various]

Havoc gave him a grossed out and unbelieving look as he poked himself right in the eye without even a flinch. "What do I want? I want you to not stand there and stab yourself in the face in my fucking bathroom, that's what!"

She let out an exasperated sigh, his stories were getting crazier all the time. "No one put anything in your fucking eye. You passed out in the yard cause I dunno, you forgot to eat or something like normal people fucking remember to do, and then we brought you into the living room so you weren't all passed out in the lawn like some kind of drunk hobo or something. We saw you the whole time. No one did nothing with you."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Did you remember to take your meds today? Cause you're not acting like it right now..."

Mido threw his hands up, looking exasperated, "If I don't they'll find us!" He made a frustrated sound as he rubbed at his eyes, "the light burns...That's proof!" He glanced up at her when she explained what had supposedly happened, frowning and looking confused, "oh yeah...I woke up on the couch..." He took another glance back at the knife in the sink, a long, meaningful look, "they must have gotten into your head too...Making you believe things that didn't happen..." He was fidgeting nervously, shaking his head.

"No. I'm not going to." He glanced up at her with a suspicious look on his face, "it doesn't help. They just wanna kill me...You all wanna kill me." He back stepped a little, "you wanna poison me with those fucking pills." He glanced at the knife again, "I'll kill me before you can."

"Yeah, you're killing yourself alright. With all that other weird shit you're taking." Havoc still had her arms folded across her chest, staring him down.

"Trust me. None of us wanna kill you. This is like the last fucking place anyone wants to kill you. But listen to me, man. If you totally utterly fucking stubbornly refuse to fucking help yourself...we're gonna have some fucking problems, okay?"

She wasn't sure she was getting through to him. She was never sure if any of them did. "You can't just keep doing this weird shit. You can't accuse everyone of trying to kill you or poison you all the time...you can't do weird shit like try to maim yourself or others here. You gotta take your fucking meds and at least try to get your shit together." A pause for effect. "I'm not fucking asking either. I'm telling."

He hated this feeling, this scattered. backed into a corner, burning feeling. The lucid part of him that was begging for this to stop knew she was right, but the fucked up and twisted part that seemed to always beat it down just wanted to escape through the nearest exit and run for dear life, "I'm scared..." He was cringed further inward as he finally backed into the wall of the smaller bathroom, wringing his hands, "I don't know how to stop...I feel worse when I stop..." He sunk down a little, staring at the floor with that long stare again.

"I don't think it helps...Jess says it does..." He couldn't help the buzzing feeling in his head, like a nest of angry hornets, "what if it doesn't help?" He looked up at her finally, somewhere between here and gone.

At least he seemed to be at least kind of listening. That was better than nothing, better than having to fight him on this, better than having to pull out the threats. All things she was willing to do if she had to, but didn't want to.

"It feels worse at first because it takes time to level out. If you take it for a day or two...then don't take it for a week...then take it for a day...then not for two weeks...all your doing is fucking up everything inside of you. It gets a little good stuff...then you take it away. That's why you gotta take that shit every day so it actually gets the chance to work."

She relaxed a little leaning against the doorway. "Well, I mean you don't talk about weird conspiracies and try to carve out your own fucking eyeballs when you take them. And you don't know if it works until you give it an honest to god try, not a half-assed, I'm only doing this cause I gotta try. And I mean, I get it. Coming on or going off shit is fucking hard. But...man, you don't have a lot of options here..."

He'd sunken fully to the floor when she spoke again, looking up at her with a tired expression, "so it wont kill me?" He chewed at his lip as he reached to fidgety and play with his toes, trying to find something to do with his twitchy hands, "I start feeling all fucked up and then...I dunno...I guess I convince myself that it means I'm going to die..." He looked up at her after a moment, it was rare that he was ever lucid around anyone but Jessica, "I know this shit is in my head...I know that...B-but just...I only know that when it's not happening...And I can't do anything because that voice is so much stronger than mine..." He reached his hands to rub over his face before he sunk his head to rest on his knees, "I hate this..."

He glanced up when she spoke again, nodding vaguely, "I don't have any other options...I fucked my own life up. I've got no excuse other than being a fucking idiot..." He looked down, "I coulda' been a famous artist...But I dunno if I even have that part of me anymore...Too many fucking drugs..."

"Uh, what's like a thousand times more likely to kill you is all that fucked up not-prescription shit you find who knows where and take. That's not helping you. At all." She was quick to counter.

She ran a hand up her face and through her hair, taking a breath to get her patience back in check. He wasn't himself, she reminded herself. He needed help, not her getting impatient with him. He needed her to have it together as much as he needed to get it together right now.

"That's why you need to take your meds. Like your real meds, not that other shit. And that's why you need to take them, as they're prescribed to you. Every fucking day. And keep taking them even if they're not working immediately. And weren't you set up with fucking therapy sessions too? Like you need to do that shit too. Trust me."

She shifted her weight against the doorway. "Are you seriously sittin' there telling me about how people can't come back from being on drugs and shit? Like...seriously? C'mon man...like...I don't remember most of my teenage years. I mean, we're taking weapons grade obliterated. It's not easy...but you can get over this shit."

Mido nodded and glanced down at the floor, heaving a sigh, "you're right...It's not...It only makes me feel...Bad..." He looked over his trembling hands with a disgusted frown, "I hate doing this to myself...Why's stopping so hard..." He tried a couple of times, but the withdrawals had made him feel like he was actually going to die, "I suppose it has to get worse before it gets better...It's just...Hard to quit."

He glanced up at her, and then looked away with a guilty expression when she mentioned his therapy sessions. He'd gone to them for a month, but then the thought of going started to freak him out, "Trust...Trust is the problem." He ran his hands through his hair, "I wanna trust people but my damn fucked up brain tells me I can't...It tells me a million reasons why I shouldn't...And I just...Don't know how to not listen..." He supposed that was what the therapy sessions were for, to give him the tools to handle that.

He looked up at her, "it's just...Hard to look ahead..." He rubbed at his eyes, "I look at my future and I kinda just see myself dead in a ditch somewhere...And I kinda start to wonder if maybe that would be the better end for someone like me..." His expression softened and he smiled a little but, "but...But Jess...She likes me...When I'm me y'know? A-and I wanna be me more...For her...A-and myself..."

Havoc let out a long sigh and sank down to sit on the floor in the doorway, down more on his level to keep talking.

"I didn't say it was fun. Or easy. But it's better. Most days anyway." She shook her head slightly.

She tilted her head a little, looking over at him. "Jess is good people. We like her. She likes you. We all wanna help each other here. But you think this is fun for her? You think she enjoys this, watching you do this shit to yourself? Having to beg and plead with you to take fucking care of yourself? Do you think she wants to hear about you dead in a ditch somewhere after you, I dunno, fucking cut your own fucking eyes out?"

She let that sink in for a moment. "Now, Jess is a nice person. So she'll keep asking nice and being nice and pleading and hoping it works. But I"m not a fucking nice person so I'm just gonna say it. Here's the deal. We wanna help you. We do. But...it's us against the world. This is our place here where we can feel safe and not have to deal with that shit. You going off the rails all the fucking time...like we can't even leave out a steak knife or fucking toilet cleaner cause we're worried what weird shit you'll do with it. Sam's had fucking enough, I talked him into giving you one more shot, cause I get it. This shit's fucking hard. But you *gotta* fucking meet us halfway here. You have to. That's not optional anymore." She was good at being the hard-ass when she had to, she guessed it just worked to play to her strengths.

"If you wanna stay. If you wanna fight for yourself, and fight for Jess and all that...we stand by you and will do everything we can to help. But going forward...ground rules. No more illegal-type drugs. None. No booze either. You take your prescribed stuff. Every day. You go to your therapy sessions, however often those are. Can you do that? Do you even wanna do that?"

He looked up when she began speaking, feeling a stone sinking into his gut. He'd been vaguely aware that his presence here had caused a lot of trouble, but he never even thought about just how tense and unhappy people were because of him and the shit he did. His whole posture shifted to a very dejected slump the more she spoke, and when she was finally finished, he glanced up at her, "sometimes I wonder if I might be better off gone...Gone so the world can forget about me." Just another nameless body at the morgue, it felt like a fitting end to the joke that he'd made of his life.

But they'd done so much for him, throwing that away would be a waste of all of their effort, and even if in the end they still hated him and wanted him gone, at least he would have tried. He looked up at her after a moment and nodded, it was a daunting thing to think about, but it was something he had to do for Jessica's sake and everyone else's, "I-I can do that...I wanna do that..." He ran a hand through his hair, "I'm sick of...Of..." He gestured to himself, "this...A-and I can't keep doing this to Jessica..."

"Oh my god, are you serious right now?" Havoc snapped before she caught herself. "Dude, fucking listen to my words. I'm saying this stuff because there are people who *don't* want you to just fucking crawl off and die. Because we're trying to help you not crawl off and fucking die. Like seriously, if I didn't give a shit I wouldn't stop and talk to you about this! Fuck!"

She ran a hand over her hair in frustration, but calmed when he agreed to her terms though. "Good. That's good. Okay. So...we'll need to work out like who's gonna hold your meds and stuff...and make sure someone takes you to your sessions and junk...sorry if it looks like we don't trust ya, but right now...we wanna make sure it's all actually happening, right? We'll get that worked out...but...I'm glad you wanna try."

Mido looked up at her for a long time when she spoke, then sighed and looked down, "I know...It's harder to convince myself of that than it is saying it..." Sure there was the part of him that knew that she was right, that people didn't want him just dead and gone, but convincing himself of the truth in that was harder, "I'm sorry...I-I'll try and remember that..." He looked up at her with a tired smile.

At her words he chewed at his lip, looking thoughtful, "I-I think I'd like Jess to hold onto them...I-if she's okay with it..." He ran a hand over his arm and looked to the floor, "she's...I dunno...I'd rather she held onto them..." He trusted Jessica, and it would be easier for him to believe that she wasn't trying to poison him or whatever other fucked up thing his brain cooked up, "s'okay..." He looked up at her with a nervous smile, "I don't trust me either...I understand." He glanced back down and then sighed before getting to his feet, "I do...I...Don't want to be like this for the rest of my life...I'm sick of feeling fucking crazy all the time..."

"That's okay, if you don't remember, we'll keep reminding you." She smiled a little for the first time.

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure Jess would do it. I'll talk to her, but you should to."

As he stood up she reached past him and took the knife out of the sink, just in case. "Good. That's a good way to feel. Remember that. Remember you don't always wanna be like this. Remember that and fucking fight." She actually did smile at this, glad that this conversation had gone better than it could have.